Token Vesting
How Umia uses MetaVesT to lock and release founder, team, and investor tokens
Umia mints a venture's entire token supply once, up front. The tokens that belong to founders, the team, and early investors are not handed out — they are locked in vesting contracts and released gradually, either as time passes or as the token's market price proves the work is paying off.
Umia handles this with MetaVesT, a well-established onchain vesting framework, wired into the venture's noncustodial treasury and decision-market governance.
Why pre-mint and lock
Rather than promising to mint tokens later, Umia creates the full supply at launch and locks the allocations that aren't yet circulating.
- The whole supply exists from day one; only the circulating float is sold in the auction.
- Locked allocations are real supply, not future promises — so there is no surprise dilution down the line.
- The hub always shows circulating vs. total, so the locked overhang is transparent to everyone holding the token.
Noncustodial by design
No founder or team member can move locked tokens early. Release follows the schedule that was set, and any new grants or changes go through a decision market — never a unilateral action.
How a grant works
Each grant is its own onchain allocation that custodies its tokens for the grant's lifetime. Two independent conditions decide how much a beneficiary can actually take:
- Vesting — has the token been earned yet (by time or by price)?
- Unlocking — has it been released for withdrawal yet?
A beneficiary can withdraw the amount that has both vested and unlocked, minus whatever they have already taken. Keeping the two axes separate lets a venture, for example, vest tokens on a fast schedule while releasing them more slowly.
Two ways tokens unlock
Over time. Tokens vest linearly across a set duration. A grant can include a cliff — an initial period where nothing vests, after which a lump becomes available all at once and the rest continues linearly. This is the classic "1-year cliff, then linear" startup schedule.
At a price. A grant can carry milestones that unlock only once the token's market price crosses a set threshold. The price used is a manipulation-resistant time-weighted average (TWAP), so a momentary spike can't trigger an unlock. This ties rewards to value actually delivered, not just time served.
A single grant can combine both: a steady time-vesting stream plus price milestones layered on top.
Price unlocks come after launch
A price milestone can only be met once the venture's market is live (after the auction migrates to a spot pool) — there is no market price before then.
The three kinds of grant
MetaVesT supports three allocation types, so Umia can model the usual compensation structures:
- Vesting allocation — the common case. Granted tokens vest and unlock on the schedule above.
- Token option — the right to buy tokens at a fixed exercise price. The option vests over time; the holder pays the exercise price to claim the underlying tokens.
- Restricted token award — tokens granted up front but subject to repurchase if conditions aren't met; the restriction lapses on a schedule.
When grants are created
At launch (genesis). Founder, team, and investor grants are locked before the token goes to auction, so only the remaining float is offered to the public. Control over the grants is handed to the venture's governance before the venture is even live — so the launch operator keeps no backdoor.
After launch. A new grant — a new hire, an advisor — is added through a decision market. The treasury mints and funds the allocation only if the market approves the proposal, the same way every other treasury action is governed.
Claiming
Beneficiaries claim directly from their own allocation whenever something is withdrawable — withdraw for a vesting grant, exercise for an option. Confirming a price milestone is permissionless: anyone (or Umia's keeper, as a convenience) can flip a milestone to "unlocked" once its TWAP threshold has been met.
Seeing it in the hub
The venture's vesting surface shows, for each grant, how much has been granted / vested / unlocked / claimed / withdrawable, the schedule behind it, and any price tranches measured against the live TWAP — alongside the venture-wide circulating-vs-total supply view.